Urban media operators and maternal health awareness: An inquiry

The advancement of health for urban dwellers would be an uphill task and may end up not becoming a reality without the involvement of media operators situated in urban settings. The role of the media industry in facilitating health and wellbeing as embedded in the Millennium Development Goals as well as the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be underemphasized. This study zeroed in on two Nigerian broadcast media operators - Africa Independent Television and Lagos Television - for the purpose of ascertaining the knowledge of urban media operators on maternal health; identifying the target audience of maternal health messages; knowing the language(s) used in transmitting maternal health messages; finding out the performance rating of urban media operators as regards maternal health dissemination; and discovering strategies adopted by urban media operators to promote maternal health awareness. The qualitative research approach by way of interview was adopted to address the aforementioned study objectives. Amongst several findings of the study, it was deducted that the urban media operators in question were knowledgeable on the subject matter, had more than one type of target audience for their maternal health messages and made use of awareness campaigns. A major recommendation of this study was that urban media operators required a good level of networking with urban health organizations to break through barriers that impede the massive success of propagating maternal health messages that are beneficial to urban dwellers in particular and the entire public in general

The perception of maternal health messages in two urban television stations in Nigeria

Countless numbers of women across the globe lose their lives virtually every day for reasons associated with childbirth. Maternal mortality is a national dilemma that does not only affect females in rural areas but those in urban areas as well. A recognized and unarguable fact about the social responsibility of the media whether in a rural or urban setting, as Folarin (2005) avers, is that of informing the public to engender its self-determined action; it, therefore, means that the public engages in health actions based on the health message at its disposal from the media. This study, using survey as the research design and with the aid of a questionnaire, was an attempt at answering research questions on: the major source of maternal health information among urban school children; how often the broadcast media are used by urban school children; the degree of exposure to broadcast media health programmes among urban school children; and the extent to which broadcast media health programmes address the issue of maternal health. The population of the study constituted the entire SS3 students of three urban secondary schools. It was discovered, among other things that, interpersonal sources rather than the mass media, served as the major sources of maternal health information; the television was indicated as the broadcast medium used by majority of the urban school children on a daily basis. The conclusion of the study was that breaking the cycle of death among females resulting from childbirth is achievable when maternal health dissemination becomes a central focus of media business and it was recommended that a paradigm shift was required from a media routine of merely creating awareness on maternal mortality to promoting the prevention of maternal mortalit

Seminal Histone Deacetylase, Fructose and Serum Reproductive Hormones as Diagnostic Marker in Sub-Groups of Infertile Males

Accurate diagnosis of the cause of infertility assists in the choice of treatment modalities and amelioration of the associated psychosocial problems. The research was carried out using 75 infertile males and 75 males with proven fertility as controls. The anthropometrics (weight, height) were measured and body mass index (BMI) computed. Venous blood was collected from each participant, allowed to clot, and centrifuged to obtain the serum which was analysed for testosterone, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) concentrations. Semen was collected by masturbation and analysed for sperm quality, seminal fructose concentration, and histone deacetylase (HDAC) activities. A non-significant difference (P>0.05) in weight, height, and BMI; a significant increase (P<0.05) in ejaculated volume, serum LH, FSH, seminal fructose concentrations and HDAC activities; and a decrease in sperm count, sperm motility, serum testosterone concentration was observed among subgroups of infertile men. A direct and significant correlation exists between seminal HDAC activities and fructose concentration. Also, an inverse non-significant correlation exists between HDAC activities and spermatozoa motility. Base on the result obtained from this study, it can be concluded that measuring seminal fructose and HDAC activities in addition to routine biochemical and biophysical parameters will assist in diagnostic work up in subgroups of male infertility

Speech Interfaces for Equitable Access to Information Technology

Speech recognition has often been suggested as a key to universal information access, as the speech modality is a "natural" way to interact, does not require literacy, and relies on existing telephony infrastructure. However, success stories of speech interfaces in developing regions are few and far between. The challenges of literacy, dialectal variation, and the prohibitive expense of creating the necessary linguistic resources are intractable using traditional techniques. We present our findings evaluating a low-cost, scalable speech-driven application designed and deployed in a community center in rural Tamil Nadu, India, to disseminate agricultural information to village farmers. (c) 2007 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.